Asking for the moon

During his recent visit of South Korea, Advisor to the Prime Minister on Commerce, Textiles, Industries, Production and Investment Razak Dawood has urged the South Korean Companies to liberally invest in Pakistan by participation in the CPEC related projects and particularly the exclusive Economic Zones for Korean companies. He claimed that business regulations have been fast-tracked and simplified to attract foreign investment.

Father of Classical School of economic thoughts Adam Smith had rightly said, “If wishes were horses beggars may have ridden on them all the time.” The advisor on commerce and investment is trying to sell false wishes as if the South Korean investors are unaware of the extremely unfavourable economic environment in Pakistan, which is characterized by sky-high tariffs electricity and gas, dearth of highly skilled but cheap workforce, delay and disputes in land acquisition for industrial zones, total neglect of research and development activities by making the R and D institutions redundant, , highly expensive imported industrial raw material and squeezed credit facilities for investment in small and medium enterprises.

The industrialized countries had outsourced their industries of intermediate technology to developing countries like Malaysia, Bangladesh and India in the pursuit of cheap but highly skilled labour, low electricity and gas tariffs, and tax holidays of 20 years. This sort of favourable economic environment does not exist in Pakistan. It remains to be seen how the self serving bunch of unelected advisors does a miracle to substantially lower the cost of doing business.

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